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Tuesday, 31 May 2011

I wandered around books today at Oporto's book Fayre. But only one took all my full attention and it wasn't even there at the fayre. I was at FNAC at the graphic design section when I saw the book of my favourite urban artist. I don't usually have one single favourite artist, but in what touches the graffiti made into art (I know it's a urban art, but try to get that into a museum... Banksy does that! Illegally, but still...)

I smiled in every turn page, that guy is a genius! What I love about him is his constant criticism of the way we live and (don't) think. Experience is the new thinking (hey, I have to do a typographic work with this sentence!).

There was one situation, very ironic, that told much about the state of art. Banksy uses a lots of rats in his creations. One day someone said to him that it was very clever of him, because rat is an anagram for art. Guess what, he never thought about it before. Art is never the intention of the artist, because it vanishes once the public puts their minds on it. -the same is for what is art.

Monday, 30 May 2011

Today I made another step toward my dream of working as a graphic designer. I applied for the Master in Graphic Design and Editorial Projects and I can't wait to get the response.

June, 15th will be a hell of a day or a paradise of a day (hopefully the second one): I'll receive the keys of my new home (yay!) and also the confirmation, or not (but that won't happen, right?), that I've entered the Master. It will be so awesome! Meeting new people, learning new things, starting new projects and developing skills... I would have so much to share with you!

But, for now I'll show you the work of a Bulgarian artist that I found recently. His name is Petya Savova, he's from Sofiya and he's a believer.

When you're a designer, or want to become one, you have to have not only a creative portfolio, but also a CV that will stand out from the crowd. And I'm not meaning information only, but also the layout.

The most part of us, when writing a resume, think of impressive data. What we want to say is that we're better than the other applicants. But why saying when you can show it? We all know how to write and sometimes we doesn't say all the truth, and let's face it, they know that too. But actually do what we say we know how to do... it's a bit more difficult, right?

It will take time and sometimes can be frustrating, there's so much information you want to put down... Just make it simple: less is more so put only the really important data. And don't forget to make your contact visible, or else, no matter how much they liked you, they'll could never reach you.

There is some outstanding examples that I want to show you and in the end I'll present to you my own creative CV, it isn't as good as the others, but hey! Everything I learned is self-taught!

You can see them on two great websites: hongkiat and in save delete, they already did the hard-work for me so let's enjoy it!

Mine is right here, I'll only show you a print-screen, but I'll upload it at my behance and deviantart portfolios.

One of them is Synaesthesia. I think I never told you about this neuropathology before, but I've been obsessed by this for the last 3 years because it's such a different way to see the world. It seems a good disease to me (if that exists) because we can relate it to design and creativity. My master's thesis will focus on this for sure.

Synaesthesia can be explain as a mix of senses ( a linkage really), in a sort of way. We use just the eyes to see, only the ears to hear, and the hands to touch, and so on. But people with this pathology can use eyes to hear or ears to see. They associate colours to letters and numbers, or even music notes! That doesn't sound amazing?

We use synaesthesia very often in our lives too, specially when we write. When you say 'what a sweet sound' or 'I'm feeling blue' you're being synaesthetic.

Tuesday, 10 May 2011

What a stunning photography, don't you agree? You can feel the calm breeze of the wind and hear the whispering sound of the waves. I bet you would like to be at this place right now.

This is what good photography is all about: making us feel good and enter in the world created by the artist. Pedro Barreiro is one of those artists and I interviewed him so you can be inspired by his talent. It's on portuguese, though. However I'll manage to do a translation.

Pedro is a Portuguese nature photographer and he's from Lisbon, to know more about him continue reading...

Talk about ourselves is always tricky. lol I've always been an indecisive boy and with little self-confidence, which led to, as a kid, not knowing what I liked or what I wanted to do. I never cared much about studying, everything that was theoretical would gone wrong. But I loved all that was practical. I always liked to draw, paint, do constructions and all that was connected to manual labor. And so I followed Arts, took a course in professional graphic arts, and began to be fascinated with the world of colours and shapes of letters (graphically speaking). The course of my life started there although I'm not entirely creative in this area, I started to like it, after jumping from internship to internship in several advertising agencies I decided to take a graduation, I entered in Equipment Design, not quite what I wanted but I decided to risk it.

And it was born the dream of photography. I had a chair about photography in the first semester, I learned the basics of photography, but I was completely captivated. After the chair came to it's end I never stopped, and what began as a hobie has now become a profession.

The big dream is to live only by photography, and preferentially to travel around the world. :)

Nature is a part of me, and no it is not strictly photographic. I went to Scout for 18 years and since I am young I'm used to do small to do activities in the midst of nature, whether is camping, walking, playing, etc.. And in fact, nature makes us feel very little, and it's fascinating that we can live with it. It is a pity to see how many people do not know how to respect it. We [Portuguese] are always complaining, we say that the foreign countries are so beautiful, I wish to travel here or there, and we not even notice the beauty that we have at Portugal. I followed this type of photography by the beauty I feel when I'm in it, although there are many other things in photography that fascinates me, is also very good to take the beauty of the landscape itself and show to people how we interpret it.

Tejo

3. Há quanto tempo fotografas e qual foi a aprendizagem mais difícil até agora? / For how long do you photograph and which was the most dificcult leraning so far?

I started caring about photography after the semester I had in college, because I had previously taken a course on analog photography course in graphic arts. But I do not know why I did not care about it at that time.

My real learning was by experience because so far I didn't had any graduation. I started in 2005 and I tried a lot, I've made many mistakes and learned from it, the urge to want more and do better has led me to want to show my work and see the work of others that were better than me. In that same year I joined www.deviantart.com and I feel that_I learned a lot. Not only by criticism they gave me, but also because I asked the photographers who were my reference about tips on how I could achieve that effect, and which material would help me, and from there, I made new experiences. The most complicated is when you try and do not get results, but we can't lose hope. I still try to learn more, is not just the sites where I publish my work, but also in books, on videos, courses, workshops, and also going to shoot with other people.

4. Qual foi a paisagem que mais prazer te deu fotografar? / What was the landscape that gave you more pleasure to photograph?

All Landscapes give me pleasure to shoot because when I'm shooting I'm in the clouds, it seems that feeling when we're kids and we go to a birthday party, and when we get there we have a table full of gums and candies, and then we can play football , and we can play on the high-end console of our friends and that it never ends and we don't see not time passing by.

But it gives me more pleasure when I go in search of adventure, usually to a beach where you have to stop the car on a dirt road, make a long walk down the cliff, sometimes even having to go down with ropes, and then see the hidden and wonderful beaches. As an example we have Praia da Ursa, the Malhada do Ouriço and Ribeira do Cavalo.

Praia da Ursa

5. Existe algum lugar no mundo que gostasses de fotografar? Qual e porquê? / There's any place on the world that you would like to photograph? Wich one and why?

Well, you just ask difficult questions eheheh, I have so many, some to landscapes and other to people. But I'll give you 2, I would love to go to Iceland, because of it's vast landscapes of huge ice falls. And I would love to go to India, because of its culture and people.

Regarding my favourite photographers I will mention a few because I find it impossible to say just one. Ansel Adams was a photographer of landscapes that inspired me, I like very much like the work of Steve McCurry. Then I have some more photographers I would like to mention that aren't very known of the public. Marc Adamus, Michael Anderson, and a Portuguese photographer I like very much, Luis Afonso.

Cabo da Roca

7. Qual é o processo criativo que segues para que o teu trabalho se distinga de tantos outros fotógrafos? Qual é a intenção que desejas transmitir? / What is the creative process you follow so that your work is distinguished from many other photographers? What is the intention you wish to transmit?

I think my personal touch has a lot to do with the fact that I also like design, I feel that colour and the graphics of my photos is what differs from others. I enjoy more vivid colours and I always try to do a photo trying to show that more colourful side. I have sometimes pictures already thought and when I go to a place I try to do what I had in mind, but sometimes the inspiration only comes in the moment. I really enjoy photographing beaches, water and rock formations are the things I love to photograph and I think they quite match.

8. Existe uma grande polémica no uso do Photoshop para o melhoramento das fotografias, qual é a tua opinião relativamente a este assunto? / There is a great controversy on the use of Photoshop to enhance pictures, what is your opinion on this matter?

This month came out an interview about me in a magazine photo (the photo zOOm practice) and they also made me that question. The photoshop is an essential tool for a photographer, there are always corrections that we have to do, for me what distinguishes good from bad is the end result, people sometimes speak without knowing. For example there are two types of files in a professional camera, jpeg and raw. The jpeg file is a file that has the colour profile that the machine brings; the raw file is a file of light, the colors of the raw file are completely different than jpeg because there is no treatment and is even so that it has to be treated. The photography is not intended to be as a mirror of reality, with the various techniques we do photography like we interpret reality and I see no harm to correct certain details which are not able to do with the machine. But I think one has to assume what he does. What I do in my photographs are fixes that do not alter the composition and elements in the picture and I call this post-production or editing. I do not see any harm in photo-montages in which it implements textures, skies or other elements that doesn't exist on the picture, but calling it a photo-manipulation and not a photography..

9. O que fazes quando ficas sem ideias? / What do you do when you run out of ideas?

Not having ideas is not "our daily bread", but it helps to see many photos of other artists, In there I highly recommend www.deviantart.com and www.flickr.com, the key is selecting because they have a lot of things not worth seeing.